Ministers will today be attacked for cutting the pensions paid to retired
members of the Armed Forces and their widows.

Jim Murphy, the shadow defence secretary, will say in his speech to the Labour conference that it is “quite simply wrong” for retired or injured members of the military to be targeted as part of the Government’s public-spending cuts.

Along with other government pensions, military ones will increase in line with the lower consumer price index rate of inflation, rather than the retail price index rate.

The Forces Pensions Society calculates that the inflation change, which affects pensions and annual guaranteed income payments, means a 34-year-old wife of a staff sergeant killed in Afghanistan could lose almost £750,000 over her lifetime.

Mr Murphy will say: “This has been a year of contrasts in defence — between the bravery of our forces and the foolhardiness of our government.

“Generations of our troops are losing increased pension payments. This change is permanent while we all know that the deficit is temporary.

“It is quite simply wrong that a man in his late eighties who jumped out of a landing craft at Normandy back in 1944 is having his pension payments permanently cut to pay for George Osborne’s economic policy.”

Mr Murphy will also call on David Cameron to ensure that Afghanistan is the “biggest defence priority” for Britain.

He will say that “the Government was right to act” in Libya, but will add: “Afghanistan must remain the biggest defence priority for our nation. This is a mission that remains in the national interest: preventing Afghanistan from slipping back into terror, extremism, or civil war contributes to our own security here at home.

“And now that a timetable has been set for withdrawal it is essential that the military effort is matched by a new political effort.

“We want re-integration and reconciliation, domestic security, infrastructure built and local self-governance.” Also in his speech in Liverpool, he will say that after the second Iraq war, the decision on whether to take military action abroad is “even more difficult”.

“The decision to place our people in harm’s way will never be taken lightly,” he will say.

“But I don’t want the anger many people feel about the action taken in Iraq to ever defeat the shame we all felt about the failure to act in Rwanda.”